Virtues, the Common Good, and Business Legitimacy

When it comes to contributing to the wider society’s common good, organizations’ considerable ethical failures have weakened overall trust in business firms. Mainstream legitimacy theory fails to address normative issues on the ethical responsibilities of management toward and the role of business in society. This chapter reviews the main approaches to business legitimacy linked with institutional theory in light of the virtue ethics tradition to show how a virtuous management paradigm can enable a better relationship between the firm and its stakeholders, promoting their well-being and contributing to the common good of society as a whole. To facilitate a richer and more nuanced understanding of virtue ethics’ concerns, it applies key terms from Aristotelian virtue ethics to discussion of the role of management and ethical communication in the context of business legitimacy. © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020.